


Aura’s Bow

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Nightrunner Series - Lynn Flewelling
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, First Time, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, Self Confidence Issues, Sexual Inexperience, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:34:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1325140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Near the end of <i>Casket of Souls</i>, Klia summons Thero to Plenimar a final time, to comfort her in her tent in the wake of Phoria’s death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aura’s Bow

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta’ed. Any mistakes are my own.

As always, Thero’s eyes opened not long after the night sky had begun to pale.

He blinked sleepily, readying himself to get up and make breakfast for two dozen wizards. He wondered why the window in his tower bedchamber was across from his bed rather than over it, and why his throat felt so abraded and a spot on the side of his neck seemed to burn.

His first realization was that he’d slept in his shirt and trousers. A vague memory came to him of Seregil and Alec carrying him up to the second floor of the Stag and Otter and settling him into a bed, a memory made more of balance and gravity than of sight and sound. Then the rest of the previous evening came flooding back, and he sat up, heart racing and mind rapidly clearing.

Phoria ä Idrilain was dead. A young boy named Mika was alive, and so was Illia Cavish. Thero himself had nearly died, then spent the last of his strength bringing Illia back. And Klia—

As if the thought of her name had prompted it, a small, winking blue orb drifted down from the ceiling.

“Thero.”

Klia had a low, husky voice for a woman. Normally it resounded with the confidence one expected from a Skalan princess and Army commander. Now, he heard strain in it, a rawness like that of the wound to his neck. In all that had happened since the night before last, when her last message sphere had appeared, he’d had no time to dwell on the fact that she’d personally watched her half-sister’s head be struck off her shoulders. Or that, since winning victory for Skala by slaking her battle rage in Plenimaran blood, she would have had time to contemplate her final sight of Phoria. A sight no victory would ever erase.

“I’m here, Klia.”

“No, you’re not. Not here with me.” The words were reproachful. He ignored the pang of guilt they struck in him; it was only grief speaking.

“I can remedy that. Give me a few minutes.”

He didn’t need to cast a scrying spell to know that his hosts were asleep and would remain so for hours to come. He did scry briefly into the front chamber on the second floor. Micum and Kari lay sound asleep in the large bed, each with an arm draped protectively over Illia, who was curled up between them. Their sleep seemed peaceful. After all they had suffered, it was the least they deserved.

Elsbet, however, was awake in her own chamber, her dark head lowered in contemplation. Thero cupped his hands and spoke softly into them: “Elsbet. Tell the others I have gone to visit Klia. They will hear from Magyana later today. I will return when I can.” The green message sphere rose from his hands and disappeared through the wall.

He scried once more at Orëska House, where, as he’d known he would, he found Magyana awake and alert. He cupped his hands again and spoke at length into them, giving her the details of what he had learned in the past several days and what he had accomplished the night before. He told her to summon his friends to the House in early afternoon with what they’d retrieved from the theaters. And he opened his hands and released a second orb of green light.

Then he himself stood. Either Alec or Seregil had unbound his queue and left the ribbon on the bedstand. He picked it up and tied his hair back loosely; it didn’t braid well, and he never bothered. Afterward he pulled on boots and coat, buttoned the latter, and spoke a third time.

 

In the curtained-off alcove at the back of the command tent, Klia sat on the edge of her cot, dressed in the simple tunic, trousers, and boots of a common soldier. Her face was in her hands, dark hair spilling over them and halfway to the floor. She gave no indication she’d heard or seen Thero translocate to stand before her.

He was not the cold, stiff-necked young man he’d been only five years before. Life, even a wizard’s, was too short and too precious — a lesson he’d learned hard, more than once. And no cold, stiff-necked protégé of Nysander could ever have hoped to fill the void his mentor had left behind. Please Illior, he would someday do justice to Nysander’s memory.

Still, he would never be as easy with others as Seregil or Micum, or even forest-bred Alec. His heart buckled painfully to see Klia in grief, but he wondered with bewilderment whether he should take her in his arms, or whether he should even touch her shoulder before letting her know he had arrived.

So much for the wisdom of wizards.

She must have finally heard or sensed his presence, for her head came up just then. Her bright-blue eyes were red-rimmed but lucid, and her voice was sharp and cool. “I didn’t ask you to come here just to stand and stare at me.”

“Klia — I’m sorry.”

A sudden, rare flash of instinct brought him to his knees before her. He rested his cheek against the top of her thigh and wound his arms around her waist. She went briefly still before she leaned forward again and put her own arms around his shoulders and lay her head atop his.

“Should I cast a concealing spell over the alcove?” he whispered.

“No.” She dropped her voice, but somehow it was hoarser than before. “The word to my troops is that I am secluded in prayer for Phoria. I’ve given my closest subordinates orders for the day to leave me be and direct things in my stead. There’s nothing they can’t manage themselves anyway — all that’s left now is picking up the p-pieces.”

Her voice broke unexpectedly on the last word, and she began to sob. It was very quiet, little more than sniffling and catches of labored breath, but she shook heavily, and he tightened his arms about her. After five or ten minutes, the paroxysm of grief subsided, but he didn’t loosen his embrace.

She sniffled again. He suddenly remembered the handkerchief in his right trouser pocket. He dropped his right arm from around her to fish it out, and then he pressed it against the bare claw of her left hand, which was still on his shoulder.

“Thank you, my love,” she said, hoarse and rheumy and empty of emotion. The last two words flooded him with a dizzying warmth. Hesitant to speak until it receded, he merely returned his arm to her waist and squeezed tightly. 

“Korathan had told me you were setting sail this morning,” he finally said.

She blew her nose again and dabbed at her face. “Not with a storm coming in, and our sturdiest ships in ill repair after so many years of war and an empty treasury. Tomorrow is supposed to be fair; we’ll sail out then.”

They were silent for a moment. Then she added, “What I said about being secluded in prayer — that wasn’t an untruth. She… she lies in state, in another tent. The drysians have been preparing her for the return to Rhíminee. Now that we’re here one more day, they and the other priests suggested the troops be allowed to pay their respects to her. So there will be death-rites here this afternoon, as well as back in the city when we arrive. But, before the rites, I should like to visit her myself.”

He didn’t reply at first, mired as he was in sudden grief and guilt. He’d never much liked Phoria, a cold and mistrustful woman who had contemned magic openly. After what had befallen Seregil and Alec on their second journey to Aurënen, he’d come to quietly despise her. She hadn’t intended for them to be taken captive, but her low regard for them had led them into the trap set by their enemies, and that both of them had returned to Skala alive was nothing short of miraculous.

Nonetheless, she had been his queen, and for all her faults as a ruler she had been without peer as a warrior. And, too, she had done well by the able young niece who would succeed her. Much worse had sat the Skalan throne before.

He despaired to imagine the grief and guilt Klia must be shouldering. Phoria, who’d resented the love Skalans in general and the troops in particular bore her half-sister, had once treated her as an enemy. Early on during Klia’s diplomatic sojourn to Aurënen, their mother, Queen Idrilain, had died of a battle-wound. Phoria had chosen not to inform Klia of that; she’d heard the news instead from a warded message Magyana had sent to Thero.

Earlier this year, Klia and Phoria had come to a sort of wary peace after the one had sworn allegiance to the other. Thero doubted they would have ever grown truly close, but one sometimes mourned the dead for what they could have been, rather than what they were, in life. And, earlier in the year, Klia’s full brother and sister had both died as well.

“Shall I accompany you?” he asked quietly.

“Please.”

She released him and sat up straight, then stood. From the bedstand she took the glove with its stuffed forefinger and middle finger, tugging it down over her maimed left hand, making it look whole again.

He stood, too, and took her measure fully. If she’d looked thin and drawn when last he’d seen her, she looked gaunt now. He wondered how much energy she’d expended in the last few days holding her head up and pushing her way through grief, as well as through fatigue and hunger. He imagined her soldiers dining well, for the first time in years, on Plenimaran meat and bread, but Klia pushing her plate away barely touched, unable to take nourishment when she needed it most. And lying awake in her bed, seeing Phoria fall bloodied over and over, that moment of shock and sorrow before fury rushed in like a draught of poppy juice.

She was regarding him just as thoroughly. “What happened to your neck?” she asked sharply, eyes narrowing.

He touched the wound gingerly, wincing a bit. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.”

“Watcher business?”

“After a fashion.” His voice was suddenly harsh with revulsion and anger. Her brows lifted slightly, and she gave a brief nod. He’d tell her the sickening details soon enough. For the moment, the subject could wait.

She took his left hand in her intact right one. It was warm, but for all its strength it seemed mostly bones under skin. He wished again that he could spirit her back to Orëska House, put warding glyphs around her and healing spells upon her, set plates of oatcakes with honey and fresh sausage before her, then … well, hold her, and nothing more than that until and unless she demanded it of him.

And he knew she’d refuse without hesitation, because she belonged as much to her troops and to Skala as to him. More, actually. It was all of a piece of why he had come to love her.

 

The day had dawned murky and ominous on the Plenimaran coast. As Thero and Klia trod over sodden ground and dead leaves, her right hand on his arm, the first cold, heavy raindrops began to strike their heads and shoulders.

Like Thero, the Skalan camp had risen at first light. Various soldiers and officers along the route to Phoria’s tent stood up straight in greeting and pressed fists to their hearts. Klia kept her head and shoulders raised, disdaining to hide her swollen face, and met every utterance of “Commander” or “Highness” with a curt nod of acknowledgment. An impression dawned on Thero that she escorted him, not the other way around, and that she was not so much leaning on him in grief as she was, subtly, declaring him as her own to her people.

The tent was large, though not as large as the command tent, and made of skins that had been dyed black. Thero half-expected to catch the odor of decay as they entered; instead, the air inside was aromatic with tansy, rosemary, cinnamon, and myrrh. There was also the sharp scent of Plenimaran cedar rising from half a dozen braziers, their heat warding off the dank, corrupting damp of autumn.

 _The drysians have done well here,_ he thought. Common Dalnan practice was to immediately burn the dead and plow their ashes under the earth, but that did not befit the body of a queen, especially one far from home. Since the war had begun, the Army had kept among its drysians a few who knew the ancient art of preservation.

Their skill was further evidenced by a glance at the bier that stood at the center of the tent. Phoria was dressed in uniform, cape, boots — and gorget, its neck high enough to conceal her death-wound. She was as gaunt as her living half-sister, but her flesh was neither discolored nor distorted with corruption; her broad, plain face looked peaceful, in fact. A sester gleamed golden on each eyelid, and her hands had been clasped over her breast. Her graying fair hair had been washed and rebraided, the plait draped over her right shoulder.

Klia walked to the bier and dropped to one knee beside it. She raised her gloved right hand and rested it over Phoria’s cold, lifeless ones, and she inclined her forehead against her half-sister’s side. There she remained, statue-still, for a long time. The only sounds were those of flames snapping against wood and needles of rain drilling at the hides of the tent.

Thero stood in the shadows beyond the braziers. At first he wondered whether she had meant for him to kneel by her side. As the moments passed, he realized that if she had, she’d have beckoned him by now, and none too gently. For Klia, this moment belonged to Phoria, and all she wanted of him in it was witness.

At length, she raised her head. Her eyes, he was a bit surprised to see, were dry, but they churned with sorrow nonetheless. She rose, slowly but fluidly, and turned to him. Her expression was one of completion, and of expectation.

He moved silently to the bier and knelt fully beside it, lowering his head. Having had no blood ties with her, he did not presume to touch the dead queen. That he had never cared for her in life meant nothing now; silently, he mourned her not as woman but as sovereign, warrior, and close kin to his beloved. At last he broke the silence with a whisper of “Astellus carry you softly, Majesty,” and then he rose.

He found Klia’s hand on his arm again, and they departed the tent as quietly as they’d entered.

 

Her alcove boasted, in addition to cot and bedstand, a small table and two chairs. Thero closed his eyes and whispered a litany, then opened them and snapped his fingers. A plate, a teapot, and two cups appeared on the table. Klia, who had been about to sit on the edge of the cot again, stared in bewilderment at the oatcake and pear slices swimming in honey and butter, the soft-boiled egg, and the two rashers of bacon.

“What’s this?” she demanded.

“It’s food, Highness. You could stand to eat some of it, at least.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you merely my protector, or did Kor appoint you my new mother, too?”

He sighed. “Klia — just eat it. Or what you can of it, anyway. You need your strength.” Only after he’d spoken did he realize he feared for her health more than he feared her displeasure.

She said nothing for a moment, then observed, “It violates the mourning restrictions.” Hot food and drink — as well as alcohol, music, gaming, lovemaking, and any flame but that of a solitary candle in any room — were forbidden to Skalans in mourning, lest the soul of the departed visit its loved ones and be tempted to linger.

“I know. I’ve cast a spell around the alcove, so that the food and tea can’t be smelled outside it by either the living _or_ the dead. Nor will anyone come in to disturb us.”

Her brows lifted. “That’s not what I’d consider a pious use of magic.”

“I don’t give a damn right now about what’s ‘pious’ and what isn’t!” he snapped, losing the last of his patience. “I care that you look like a wraith, and how beside yourself with grief you were when first you summoned me — and still are. You cannot lead your troops and stand all throughout the rites for Phoria when you are so dangerously depleted in both body and soul. You said yourself that you didn’t call for me just so that I could stand by and stare at you, didn’t you? And do you think your half-sister herself wouldn’t have called you a fool for depriving yourself when you can least afford it?”

Her face flamed and her jawline set hard, but her expression didn’t change, nor did she speak. He wondered if he’d dared too much, but he said nothing, merely waited, until she slowly moved to the table and lowered herself into a chair. Her nostrils were twitching, but she seemed to eye the food with as much wariness as longing.

She merely sat there until Thero had seated himself across from her. Then she picked up her fork and rather listlessly began to eat, chewing slowly and without much evident enjoyment. After a few mouthfuls she looked at the teapot. Thero poured her a cup and handed it to her, and she sipped gingerly at it, then set the cup down and took up another forkful unenthusiastically.

She pushed the food around on her plate as much as she ferried it to her mouth. But, all in all, she ate the entire egg, one rasher of bacon, about half the oatcake, and a few slices of pear. “Have the rest,” she said, shaking her head and pushing the plate across the table to him. “My stomach won’t accept it, not just yet, and I’d rather it not go to waste.”

He nodded, gratified that she’d eaten as much as she did. He hadn’t felt hungry at all this morning, but now he made short work of what she’d left, washing it down with tea. She watched him, her lips twitching slightly.

When he had finished, she moved back to the cot’s edge and inclined her head. He joined her there and put an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned against him.

“That’s better,” she said softly. “You were right. I’m sorry for having lit into you about it. I’ve no complaint of how you and Mydri and Nyal cared for me in Aurënen, but I was so damnably helpless then, unable even to speak for so long. Being fussed over will always bring that feeling back to me, I suspect.”

“I’ll try to remember that.” He squeezed her upper arm. “When are the rites?”

“In a few hours. We should both visit the baths first. You should wear your formal robes, if you can summon them.”

“I can. Am I to take part in the ceremony at all?”

She shook her head. “You’ll sit inside the tent, but you won’t participate. If we were already wed, that would be apropos. At the moment it’s a bit premature.”

“If we were already—” he repeated, then stopped abruptly. His heart had briefly stopped as well.

“We can’t even begin to plan for it until Elani is wed,” Klia was continuing. “Even without the possibility that I’d produce an heir to compete with her future progeny, it’d be presumptuous on my part. And I suspect she’ll wait as long as it takes for Danos to prove himself unstained by his father’s treason. She’s a warmer soul than was Phoria, Astellus carry her softly, but she’s got the same core of iron.”

When Thero didn’t reply at once, she looked up at him. Her eyebrows rose at his stunned expression, and then her lips curved into a radiant smile, the first smile she’d given anyone today.

“What, did you think I was going to rob you of your virtue and abandon you? I want you at my side, Thero, and I want the world to _see_ you at my side.”

He drew in a deep breath before he took her chin in his hand and kissed her more passionately than he’d ever kissed anyone before. She tasted of butter and salt and eggs and tea, the same as he must have. She didn’t seem any more put off by it than he was, judging by how tightly her right hand was gripping his curls. By the time their mouths separated, they were both breathing more quickly, and he had begun to grow hard.

“I—” He swallowed. He hated to spoil the moment, but it had to be brought up. “I will have to speak with the Orëska. They’ll look the other way for a wizard who’s not celibate, but none have ever married before.”

Klia frowned, and her pupils diminished slightly. “They’re not going to deny us, are they?”

“In the end?” He ignored the flutter in his belly kindled by the word _us_. “I suspect not. Lack of issue notwithstanding, a formal union between a wizard and a royal would be a political coup for Orëska House. That doesn’t mean, of course, that there won’t be objections raised on esoteric technicalities or, for that matter, out of attempted power plays that might be based on nothing more than spite. Nor that debates won’t be dragged out for months or even years, making the Iia’sidra look like a model of efficiency and promptness.”

She snorted. “Politics. Not even magic can trump it.”

Thero smiled ruefully. “Sadly, no. Even necromancers bow to it.” The thought of necromancers brought the harrowing images of the last few nights to his mind; he forced them out immediately. 

“Well. We do have the time. And if, ultimately, they do say no...”

She leaned in close to him again. His eyes widened to feel her lips damp against the unwounded side of his neck, her tongue sliding like an adder over the sensitive skin. He gasped, then groaned. She lifted her mouth to his ear and growled, “I will still have you at my side, wed or not. And in my bed, Thero.”

The previous kiss had been passionate; this one was feral. Their teeth clicked together before his tongue found hers. Her throat vibrated with a suppressed moan. She rose up on her knees and straddled his lap, a knee on either side of his hips. The fingers of her good hand sunk into his shoulder for purchase, and the working fingers of the other knotted into his hair.

“Oh, Illior—” He barely had time to get the oath out before her mouth descended upon his again. She ground herself roughly against him, loins to loins, knowing what she felt under his trousers and demanding more of it. He forgot about the dead queen, forgot about the death-rites as he grasped her buttocks and pulled her in to him as tightly as he could.

A moment later she was pulling back, panting, pressing her forehead to his. “Shit,” she hissed. “We don’t have enough time right now.”

He exhaled sharply, pulse still hammering. He slid his unsteady hands up from her bottom to her waist, but she was already backing off his lap. Standing before him, she pushed back her disarrayed hair and muttered, “I’m a fine one to complain about impiety, aren’t I? And I probably shouldn’t appear at the rites with a silly smile plastered to my face.”

He burst out laughing, welcoming the release of, at least, some kind of tension. “You flatter me, Highness. I’m no Seregil í Korit.”

Her own laughter was a sharp, scornful burst. “Thank the Flame for that!” His brows shot up. Klia had long been fond of Seregil — a little _too_ fond of him, for Thero’s taste.

She caught his look and added hastily, “Oh, I don’t say that in denigration of him, trust me. Remember that I’ve got my troops and my queen to worry about. I don’t need to worry about you falling to your death over a wall or getting into an impromptu swordfight every other night. You can still be my protector — from the safety of your tower.”

He smiled wryly, and he wondered how he could have ever imagined trying to spirit her away for safekeeping, as if she were made of porcelain. “Would that it always worked that way. And magic isn’t without its risks, even to wizards.”

“True enough.” The look in her eyes was more resigned than sad. “We all offer up our lives for Skala in different ways, and we pray the Immortals don’t see fit to take them until we’re very old.”

He reached out and took her hands in his. Several curled strands of black hair were clinging to the palm of her glove, he noted with amusement.

“Sorry,” she said with a chuckle, not sounding very sorry at all. “I didn’t mean to pull your hair out of your head.”

“Don’t apologize.” He raised the gloved hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. “You may pull my hair all you wish, my lady.”

She shivered. “Are you _trying_ to make us miss the rites? The Orëska might not care, but my troops would wonder, and Elani, when she heard, would be livid.”

“I suppose we should stop tempting fate for the moment.” He rose, then ran his hands through his own disheveled hair. “I’ll summon my robes once I’m at the bathhouse.”

 

The death-rites were, as he had expected, long. 

The front side of the great black tent had been untethered from its pegs and rolled back to leave Phoria’s bier sheltered on three sides and overhead. The drysians had set a glass cover over her body to protect it from the damp air. The braziers still burned within the enclosure; in addition to cedar they now held stop-blood weed, the field herb of soldiers, just as those in Sarikali had during mourning for Idrilain.

Most of the troops stood out in the rain, which waxed and waned all afternoon from intermittent drizzle to torrential downpour and back. They came and went quietly, as duty permitted and demanded. The rites of Sakor, Thero noted, were the ones most heavily attended. He himself sat under the half-tent’s shelter with Klia’s highest-ranking subordinates.

Klia, as Phoria’s closest kin in the field, stood throughout the rites, participating when prompted in the manner of an acolyte. In a week, when she had returned her half-sister’s body to Rhíminee, she would change into the long black gown of a civilian princess for the final death-rites at the Palace. Now, she wore the severe black tabard, hose, and boots, with plain steel helm and gorget, that followers of Sakor donned for mourning.

In the shadows beyond the candelabrum whose lights flickered over the bier sat a harpist, flutist, and war-drummer. Their funereal music shifted in pitch, key, and timbre according to which of the Four was being called upon at the moment. Only during the eulogies did they fall silent.

That from the priest of Sakor was as fiery and grief-stricken as Thero had expected; the man seemed to personally lament the loss of such a formidable warrior-queen. The Illioran priest, equally predictably, was more subdued in her praise but flawlessly diplomatic and, to that end, often vague. Illior being the patron of things unseen and unknown, this struck no one as unusual. The camp’s chief drysian intoned the usual Dalnan platitudes about birth and death and the Maker’s all-encompassing hand. And the priest of Astellus brought the long afternoon to a bittersweet close with comforting words about the Old Sailor gently ferrying the queen to her final destination, as all men and women would someday be so carried.

When Thero and Klia finally emerged from the half-tent, her hand on his arm again, the rain had tapered off and the setting sun glowered from behind dark clouds. A sharp wind had blown in off the Osiat; the night would be cold as well as damp.

“Can you stay a bit longer?” she asked quietly as they walked back to her tent. She drew a few salutes along the way, strong with feeling after the rites, but in the milling crowd and the failing light they drew less notice than they had in the morning.

“I can.” The solemnity of the rites had remained with him, too. He didn’t exult silently at her request now, merely felt glad he could grant it for her.

Back in her alcove, he snapped the solitary candle on the table into renewed flame, and he saw that servants had cleared away the breakfast dishes and left a scrolled military report on the table. They’d also laid fresh shirt, coat, and trousers for him over the end of the cot. Klia, who had left her helm and gorget with a servant, glanced mildly at the garments. With no words or change of expression she picked up the report and turned her back to him pointedly.

As Nysander had often said, the Third Orëska regarded magic as meant to aid the endeavors of humanity, not to supplant them. For Thero to have changed back into ordinary clothes with a snap of his fingers would have been a ludicrous violation of that principle. He removed his boots, then unbelted his robes and draped them across the end of the cot, standing behind Klia in his linens. The heat in his face lingered until after he’d buttoned his coat over the rest of his clothing and drawn his boots back on.

He cleared his throat. “Tea, Highness?”

“Tea would be most welcome,” she said absently, eyes still on the report. He reinstated the concealing spell around the alcove, then summoned a new, full teapot and two cups to the table; and they took their seats there again.

“You had promised to tell me how you took that wound to your neck,” she said, eyes level and unblinking over the rim of her cup. Having survived a recent attempt on her life, she already knew of the cabal that had plotted to put her on the throne — quite against her will — and of the cabal that had plotted to have her slain. She seemed to expect Thero to say he’d been wounded in the course of preventing similar machinations.

Instead, he told her what else had been afoot in Rhíminee since early summer. With each new horror he disclosed, her shoulders stiffened further, and her jaw set harder. When he had finished, she shoved herself off the chair with a harsh intake of breath and stood before him, one rigid line of tension from head to foot.

“So the ones responsible for these abominations are dead?” she demanded. Her heart-shaped face was white, lips taut and pale, eyes hard.

“Quite dead.” He took another sip of tea, regarding her sympathetically. 

“And unable to be restored?”

“Valerius has seen to their remains. They weren’t _dyrmagnos_ ; I’m sure they burned well enough. Or, rather, whatever was left of them when we finished with them, and I mean that not as a boast but quite literally.”

“And the stricken ones who yet live — can their lives be saved?”

“I’ve passed along the instructions to Magyana. She’ll have summoned Alec, Seregil, and Micum by now, and we can hope for the best.”

Klia was silent for a moment. Then she said, “You did well, all of you. Would that you’d discovered the cause of it sooner, before the toll rose so high, but who else would have even guessed at it — especially when the magic was unfamiliar even to Orëska House?” She shuddered. “ _Aura Elustri málron._ And thank the Lightbearer that, at least, the Cavish child was spared. Beka will be absolutely murderous when she hears the story, but her heart won’t be broken.”

She sank back down into her chair. Though some of her tension had dissipated, he could yet see the weight of the ill tidings in her eyes and face, and he knew what she was thinking. Monsters had entered her city, her country, as war refugees. They’d repaid the asylum of Skala, not to mention the generosity of Seregil and many others, with murder, over and over. And she’d been far away, unable to do anything about it, not even knowing of it. That there was likely nothing she _could_ have done was beside the point.

 _You would have made a surpassingly great queen, my love,_ he thought but didn’t say. Instead he said, “Would Your Highness care to dine with me? That is, if you’ve an appetite after that tale?”

Her mouth wrenched. “I’ve eaten right after some particularly gruesome battles. I’m sure I can eat now. I can’t imagine that anything you could conjure up wouldn’t tempt me in any case.”

He smiled and snapped his fingers again, and two dishes appeared on the table. On each sat two roast leverets, their flesh redolent of dark wine and herbs, next to a cluster of artichoke hearts that had been laid over sweet-scented pink rice.

Klia arched one brow. “A bit extravagant, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’ve more than earned it. You can go back to eating hard tack and jerky tomorrow.”

She shook her head, her smile one of faintly disbelieving amusement. “And to drink?”

The Mycenan apple wine he often summoned down from Mount Apos would have accompanied young hare well enough, but it would not suffice, he thought, for a victorious commander and princess in mourning. With the next snap of his fingers, a wineglass appeared alongside each of their plates, and an amphora stood in the middle of the table. It was cool against his hands after its long sojourn in a chamber deep beneath desert sands.

“Here you go,” he said, pouring her a glassful.

She held it beneath her nose and inhaled. Both brows rose this time. “Zengati. I can’t remember the last time I had it. Of course, this is an even greater sacrilege than the food right now.”

“Consider it medicinal. A tisane, if you like.”

Klia snorted. “Were you Nysander’s student, or Seregil’s?”

He gave a short, choked laugh. “There was a time I would _not_ have taken that as a compliment.”

She grinned. Then her smile lost its mischief as she skimmed the fingertips of her right hand over the surface of her wine and flicked droplets onto the ground. “To the Four. Sakor for triumph on the battlefield, and Illior for the gifts of the Third Orëska. Dalna for the good wine, and Astellus for my sister’s final journey.”

“To the Four,” Thero echoed, making his own libation in turn, after which both of them drank deeply. He opened his eyes to see Klia’s still closed, both hands closed around the stem of the glass, her lips wet with wine and their corners turned upward in pleasure. He swallowed again, though his mouth was now empty, and lowered his gaze to his plate.

“Excellent,” she said, and then opened her eyes and set the glass down on the table. “I expect the leverets will be as well.” She took up her knife and fork. “So tell me about your new apprentice.”

The image of a scrawny boy with sandy hair and a serious face filled Thero’s mind. “Mika’s not quite nine years old,” he said as he began to tackle the first young hare on his plate, “and already he sends things flying without touching them when he’s angry. His parents love him dearly, but they’re utterly at a loss as to how to handle him. The only good thing to come out of this entire horrific affair is that he’ll be taken into Orëska House after Mourning Night — well before he’s begun to grow into manhood. Without training in how to control his gifts, in a few years he may very well have killed others or been killed himself, or both.”

Klia shook her head sympathetically as her knife sunk into tender flesh. “And then having his soul stolen on top of it all, poor mite. Even if that’s what led you to him. I’m glad you found him; you’ll do well by him.”

Thero colored faintly. “I hope you’re right.”

“Of course I am. You’re a brilliant wizard and an honorable man.” She spoke the praise matter-of-factly; with her eyes on her plate she didn’t see his blush deepen. “And I watched you entertain the children in Aurënen, remember? I daresay it was a greater stretch for you to do so in front of a crowd, especially one with that Khatme scold in it, than it will be to tutor one lad privately.”

“After the first time it wasn’t so hard. Rather fun, actually.” He sampled a mouthful of artichoke and rice. “But this hardly compares. It’s a grave responsibility, possibly the gravest a wizard ever undertakes.”

“One to which you’re more than equal. Would Nysander have chosen you otherwise, if he didn’t think you’d be able to pass his own teachings along someday? He saw things in you no one else did until— until after he was gone.”

She must have seen the spasm of pain in his face, for she set down her fork and reached out to rest her gloved hand on his right wrist. “And … surely, you must have felt something telling you that not only was this boy wizard-born but destined to apprentice to you?”

_You will know. Just as I knew with you._

“Yes,” he finally said, voice soft with awe, staring downward but not seeing the plate before him. “I did.”

She said nothing in reply, though he could still feel her eyes on him. Long moments passed in silence, other than the sounds of knives and forks scraping against porcelain and the muffled clink of glasses set down on a tabletop. 

Finally, she observed, “You seem lost in thought. More pleasant, this time.”

“Perhaps a bit,” he admitted. “Childhood memories.”

The Third Orëska decried the use of magic in seduction, rightly deeming it an abuse of power. One of their own — a handsome rake in the prime of his first century who prided himself on being able to lure any woman, and quite a few men, to his bed — also scorned it as utterly unnecessary. _A fine dinner with excellent wine is better than a hundred love potions,_ he’d slyly told his fellow wizards more than once. 

Thero had seen no harm in conjuring up such a meal, not for a woman who certainly knew her own mind. But the roasted leverets, he realized after a few bites, tasted to him of nothing so much as home.

He’d grown up in the distant southeast, nearly as far from Rhíminee as one could get and remain in Skala. It was a province visited more often by sea than land: merchants, adventurers, smugglers, pirates, the hated marines. And, throughout the generations, navigators out of Virésse or Gedre, blown off course by the Osiat’s winds; their dalliances or marriages with locals kept the magic of the province’s bloodstock replenished. Meanwhile, the less-welcome incursions of the Plenimarans had left it full of Skalans with curly black hair like Thero’s, and sometimes dark eyes and skin as well. The local euphemism for the results of that rapine was “hybrid vigor.”

Both sides of his family were inland folk. His mother Dianta had come of a mildly prosperous clan whose true fortune was the purity and power of the magic in their bloodline; Thero would learn years later that he was second cousin twice removed to Nysander’s old master. But at sixteen, Dianta fell in love with — and fell pregnant by — Procepios, a lank and curly-haired hunter’s son with no magic in him whatsoever. He took her away to the tiny village of his birth, whose men spent most of their days stalking prey in the wild.

Thero was the fourth of their brood of six. He learned to acquit himself well enough on the hunt with his father and brothers, but a hunters’ village was no comfortable milieu for a bookish, inward-gazing boy who craved knowledge as a miser craves gold. His magical abilities, which surpassed those of his siblings and of most other children from a very young age, earned him a wary respect. He enjoyed little affection from anyone but his older sister, who married and went away too soon, and his mother, who died in her final childbed before Thero turned thirteen.

Dianta was barely cold in her grave when Procepios decided that their uncanny, sullen third son should at last be presented to the local Temple of Illior. Its priests sheltered wizard-born children until they’d made arrangements for them with the Third Orëska or, occasionally, a _rhui’auros_ in Aurënen. Within a few months, Thero was under Nysander’s wing.

For years to come he would shove his upbringing into the furthest reaches of his mind, taking refuge in formality and four walls, behind towers of books and a shield of aloofness. But the events of the last five years had wrought deep cracks in his defenses, then brought them roaring down, then washed them away like the Osiat’s tides.

As they ate, he found himself telling Klia about the beauty of his native province. Deep forests and lush meadows that rolled south and east until they gave way to glinting sands and the grey-blue beauty of the terrifying southern sea. The many dawns, empty of human speech but rich with the whisper of wind in the leaves and the idle chatter of birds, that found him on a hillside choked with yellow broom, his hands around his knees, watching the tinting of the eastern sky. The scents of lemon fern and campion, sorrel and thyme; berries achingly sweet on the tongue the moment after they’d been picked. Even the rare times he felt he’d belonged: the day he’d taken down a young buck with an arrow and no magic whatsoever, and his father’s rough hand had mussed Thero’s curls in approbation. Or the crisp autumn weeks when every hand, no matter how small, was needed to help put up food and prepare skins for winter, and even the meanest task was accompanied with song.

“You’ll have to sing me those songs one day,” Klia said, her eyes sparkling.

He returned her smile but shook his head. “I couldn’t carry a tune if it were strapped to my back. Maybe I’ll teach a few of them to Seregil some time.”

“You should,” she said, chin in hand, eyes seeing him, but not only him, now. “And not merely for me, or for Seregil. Those songs are part of Skala, too.”

_A surpassingly great queen, indeed._

When nothing remained before them but a pile of delicate bones and a few grains of rice, and they had cleansed their hands on a damp linen, she said softly, “Come sit beside me.”

He rose, as did she. They returned to the edge of the cot, leaning against one another. She removed her boots and put them off to the side, then unbound her hair and set the ribbon on the bedstand. Heart beginning to race, he followed her suit in both.

The fingers of her right hand entwined with those of his left. “Perhaps we can stretch the definition of ‘medicinal’ even further this evening,” she murmured against his shoulder as she traced the back of his hand with two fingertips. “You’re sure the spell will keep her shade out?”

Desire swelled within him, but it was cut through with a pang that owed nothing to guilt over the violation of custom. “Not merely keep it out, but prevent her from perceiving that you are here. But…” he began. She said nothing, and he continued. “Klia. I said I was no Seregil. And I am not, in more ways than one.”

It took a moment for his meaning to dawn on her. “Are you telling me you’ve never…” she began, then looked up at him skeptically.

“I have. But … not often. There have been a few women in the Street of Lights. And… one other.”

Her lips thinned. “Ylinestra.”

“Yes.” Shame flared under his ribs, hot and acrid. But she said nothing more, and he realized he would not be here if she had begrudged him that deadly lapse of judgment.

After another short silence she asked quietly, “Had you thought I would think any less of you because you haven’t fucked every other woman in Rhíminee?”

The blunt words set his face alight again. “No. But … I wish I… were more skilled, to that end. Especially when you—” He fell abruptly silent.

“—are a soldier, who takes pleasure where she finds it in a world of blood and fire and carrion birds? And a princess, who’d find no shortage of eager lovers even if she looked like the bottom of a boot stuck in a midden heap?”

He couldn’t help a burst of quiet laughter. “And something of a bard, for that matter.” He’d said it in earnest, though when she remained silent he wondered if she thought he were trying to evade her question.

Finally she raised her head and looked him in the eye. “Do you think less of _me_ , that I’ve had many men, and some women too?”

He was genuinely shocked. “ _No!_ Why would I ever think so? Why would anyone who’s not a Plenimaran ever think so?”

She smiled wanly. “If that does not matter to you, why should the other thing matter to me?”

“I—” No further words rose to his lips.

The thin smile vanished from hers. “Thero. Nothing that lovers do with one another cannot be learned, and learned fairly quickly. All it takes is patience, a desire to please, and the ability to listen. I would not choose a beloved for no other reason than that he fucked well. I would not choose so if I were a washerwoman, instead of a daughter of Idrilain.”

Her hand tightened about his. “I said earlier that you’re an honorable man. I didn’t lie. And you, as much as Mydri and Nyal, kept me alive in Aurënen. I owe you my life for that. And I owe you for your services to me, and to Skala, as a Watcher — when you and your people had sworn those services to Phoria, and after you’d sworn to her that the Watchers would be disbanded.”

“I’ve served you to the extent of my abilities, just as any other loyal Skalan would. You owe me nothing, Highness,” he said vehemently and with a faint edge of offense.

She released his hand to reach up and grasp his chin; her eyes were glinting with displeasure. “ _Never_ presume to tell me what I owe or do not owe, Thero.” He fell silent, still affronted but with his anger in check, and she continued.

“Soldiers never cease to talk of loyalty and honor, yet treason and near-treason ran through my camp this summer, and I nearly died of it. The swaggering lords of Rhíminee have always boasted of their honor, too, yet how many have been exiled this year for plotting against me or my kin? Principles fall by the wayside when they’re inconvenient to power. 

“But you’re the most powerful wizard in Skala, and never, not once, have you abused that power for your own gain. As for Ylinestra? You were young, even younger than you are now, and you were careless. You paid dearly for it — and you learned from it. And—” She suddenly grinned. “You’re not afraid to tell me when I’m being a fool, which nobody outside my family has been willing to do in years. It’s something I need to hear now and again. Had you not already had my heart, you’d have earned it this morning for that alone.”

He released a long breath. “You do me great honor, my lady.”

“I do no one honor who is not deserving of it, Thero.” He couldn’t have looked away from her eyes if he’d tried. “You’ve no idea how rare you are. I would suggest you learn to comprehend it. I’ve no love for braggarts, but I want a consort who can hold his head up beside mine, knowing he’s worthy of my love — and I of his.”

Her last words made his head swim. _Klia?_ Worthy of _him?_ But he didn’t voice the thought. She had issued a command; what’s more, she had given him an ultimatum. The least he could do was try his best to heed it.

Her hand was still on his chin. She pulled his head down and brushed her lips against his. The kiss caught fire, and soon she had a knee on the cot and was leaning into him, fingers of her right hand hard against the back of his neck. This time, it was his hand curled into her hair, and his other hand sinking into the taut swell of flesh just below the small of her back. Flames erupted through him to dance on his skin, and a whirlwind of need spun inside him and dragged the breath from his lungs.

Suddenly both her hands were on his shoulders, pulling him down to her as she reclined. The pounding of his heart was almost painful now, echoing in his loins. She hooked her bare foot behind his knee and pressed the front of her body against his. “You won’t refuse me, will you?” she demanded, all breath and no voice.

“No, never,” he breathed against the crown of her head, then gasped as she began to grind against him.

She craned her neck upward to press her forehead to his, her lower body continuing to undulate like a sea-serpent’s. “Illior’s Fingers, I could watch your face for hours while I do this,” she growled. In reply he seized the back of her head and pulled her in for a rough, bruising kiss — and thrust back against her. She groaned loudly, and then she was dragging him atop her, arching up into him, even her damaged hand digging hard enough into his back through the glove to leave marks.

He pushed her down flat, then grasped the hem of the tabard and rucked it up to her shoulders. She was struggling to pull it over her head as he shoved her breast band upward as well and lowered his mouth to the jutting crimson nipples revealed. The folds of the tabard muffled her hoarse cry. “Wait,” she gasped, and raised herself a few inches up from the cot just long enough to pull off both garments and fling them to the ground.

In an instant he had her lying flat again beneath his left palm as his right hand cupped one small breast and he took its nipple into his mouth. She moaned and arched again, right hand entwined in his curls, and he made an incoherent sound against her swollen flesh as he continued to suckle it. His left hand slid down from her breastbone to curl around the other breast and fondle its nipple. She had both feet behind his knees now, and she continued to roll her hips against his, moaning intermittently.

He pulled back from her, breathless, afraid of coming before he’d even undressed. She rolled onto her side and threw a leg over his hips again to anchor herself as she began to attack the buttons of his shirt. “I need to touch you,” she whispered, pushing the fabric back and running her hands over his shoulders, down the wispy curls that covered his chest, under the shirt to stroke his back. Her mouth moved to the unwounded side of his neck and took the skin delicately between her teeth, nipping it sharply just as two of her fingers closed hard around his left nipple. Pain, and not-pain; he made a sound only slightly more dignified than a yelp, then moaned as the combined sensation set his blood singing.

Her hand was already sliding down through the trail of small, tight curls on his belly. He ceased to breathe when it reached the fastenings of his trousers, his lungs aching as it unlaced them and slipped inward — and then all the breath left him at once with the force of a windstorm. _“Aura Elustri!”_

“No, just me,” Klia said, low and rough, one corner of her mouth turned up. “Sakor’s Flame, are you going to last for me, Thero?”

“If you keep doing _that?_ ” He closed his eyes tightly. “I can’t promise you.”

He almost regretted the words when she withdrew her hand from his trousers — until she’d seized his and brought them to the waistband of her hose. “Then attend to me instead.”

His hands shook a bit, but she as much wriggled out of the leggings as he pulled them from her, and then he dropped them to the floor. She lay back, arms outstretched, knees raised and parted, eyes on his face.

He’d seen her in her breast band and linens before, not long after the assassination attempt. Pale and smooth and slender, the image of her had lingered in his mind long after, into his dreams — from which he’d awoken with bitter regret, for he hadn’t yet known she requited his desire. Now, her ribs had begun to show, and everywhere she was stippled not only with old, faded scars but with fresher, redder wounds.

“A bit worse for wear than the last time you saw me,” she said quietly, with a twitch in her cheek.

“And just as lovely,” he said thickly, kneeling astride her and leaning down for a kiss. She captured his head in both hands, holding it steady. Without hesitating he plucked her left hand out of his curls, pulled off the glove, and tossed it gently to the bedstand. Then he raised the whittled arc of flesh to his lips and began to mouth the remaining fingers, tongue tracing over the thick mass of scars that bridged them to her thumb. Eyes widening, she made a low whine in her throat.

He pulled her hand away from his mouth to hold it reverently in both his hands, like the Cup beside the Vhadäsoori. “Aura’s Bow,” he said, watching her throat work and her eyes become faintly glassy, and dived down to kiss her again before the spark between them could gutter in tears.

His mouth slipped from hers down her chin and came to rest against her throat. It occurred to him that her previous lovers would have continued the descent past her breasts. He feared to. His visits to the Street of Lights, now more than two years past, had taught him nothing about pleasing another because he had not cared to learn. Ylinestra had given him no opportunity for it, preferring to control every movement he made; of course, what she had wanted out of him had not, in the end, been pleasure.

If Klia asked it of him, he would give it, and he would let her guide him. For now, he fitted himself against her side and simply touched, learning where she swelled softly, where her edges sharpened, where her flesh gave under his hand and where muscles as strong as a panther’s coiled. Smooth skin, rough scars, wiry dark hair that gave way to generous wetness and scalding heat. This he had done before, at least, even if not with finesse.

He traced her with a fingertip, alternating between circling and sliding up and down, sometimes slipping inside, feeling her tighten around him, closing his eyes and imagining more than his finger in her grip. She made intermittent hums of pleasure and now and again arched up against his hand, but she moved more slowly, less forcefully, than before.

She startled him out of the rhythm they’d fallen into, one of touch and reaction, when she caught his hand up in hers. Holding it in her left, she used her right to separate out his forefinger, then press it against her, a bit higher than the highest point he’d touched so far.

He felt a small, hard protrusion under his fingertip. She pushed slightly harder against him, hissing out her breath, her body jolting, the motion sharper than any other she’d made since he’d lain down alongside her. She brought the tip of his finger against that spot once more, and this time her hips jerked upward more abruptly and she made a sound of need in her throat.

After the fourth time, when he could discern the shape of the half-pressing, half-circling pattern, he asked softly, “Let me?” He felt, rather than saw, her nod, and she dropped her hands away. Then he followed her lead, lightening his touch when she seemed to shudder without much pleasure, firming it when her hips canted upward for more. _The ability to listen,_ she had said; he listened through her body to how she gasped for air, how her pulse raced under her skin, the timbre of sounds without words, how she said his name. No one had ever spoken his name like that, ever.

He could tell she was drawing close when she not so much thrust as thrashed against his hand, and the sounds she made were less discrete, more abandoned. He turned his head and traced hot wet patterns with his tongue against her neck, as she had before on his, his finger continuing to work steadily, steadily, steadily against her. There was the final rise of her hips, a convulsive trembling, a deep, hoarse cry. _I could watch your face for hours while I do this._ He raised his head to watch hers, the screwing shut of eyes, the clench of teeth between parted lips, the rising flush from forehead to breasts. And then her final descent to the surface of the cot, strands of hair stuck to her face, features soft, transported.

When her eyes opened, they remained dilated, but the wit came back to them almost immediately. She turned slightly and ran her right hand straight down the center of him, cupping him through his trousers and drawing from him a desperate moan.

“Get those off and come here,” she said, so quietly that someone standing by the table might not have heard, but it was as much an order as any she’d ever given.

He fumbled with the laces, got them undone, pushed trousers and linens off as one, and let them fall to the ground. Then he was climbing over her with what he was sure was an utter lack of grace, but she seemed focused only on grabbing his hips and positioning him between her thighs. He had one hand on himself and the other on her, and he’d done this before at least a dozen times; it was the same thing, wasn’t it?

Perhaps not, at least beyond the simple mechanics of it.

“Oh,” he said, stunned.

“Yes,” she said quietly, hooking her feet behind his thighs this time, heels against his buttocks.

He didn’t last long, but afterward he was surprised he’d lasted as long as he had. To look into her face as he entered her body, as her flesh pulled at and contracted around and swallowed his — there was an intensity to it beyond the reach of words, like that of a transformation, or when Illior opened the veil between the worlds to her supplicants. He was kissing her as he thrust, and then he was tensing like the string of a bow, and as she arched upward into a second climax he buried his mouth against her neck to stifle a cry. 

A moment later he was lying half on her, half on the cot, shuddering as if what had left him had been magical force rather than something as commonplace as seed, and sterile seed at that. Her ribcage still rose and fell quickly under his own. With her right hand she traced idle, light paths over his shoulder and upper back for a moment. Then she squirmed out from under him.

“It’s a bit cold for going outside tonight,” she said, somewhat apologetically. He didn’t understand until she crouched and he heard the drag of heavy ceramic over beaten earth. Then he rolled onto his side, away from her, and tried not to listen to the stifled patter of urine within the chamberpot or, afterward, the splashing of water from the ewer. Training and war, of course, put paid to any modesty a soldier might have initially possessed. But he couldn’t help wondering with a faint amusement, _I suppose this is what married life is like._

And then he wondered where they’d live that life. Consorts had only ever resided at the Palace, but his place was at Orëska House and always would be. _Including long after she’s gone,_ a pragmatic but wistful voice said in his mind’s ear. He pushed the thought away, realizing he would have to get used to pushing such thoughts away. And, after it, he hurried along the worries about living arrangements. As she had said, it would be a few years before that question needed an answer.

The cot dipped under her returning weight, and then she was warm and solid against his back, right arm draped possessively over his side. He curled his hand around it, and she nuzzled the uninjured side of his neck lightly and idly.

“That was quite nice,” she said, rather offhandedly, as if praising the quality of wine.

“I’m glad voiding your bladder brings you so much pleasure, my lady.”

Her laughter was low-pitched and brief; he could feel her ribcage shift up and down against his back, and he felt a strange appreciation that he could not only hear but feel her mirth. “I daresay you _have_ been taking lessons from Seregil.”

“That’s not entirely untrue. But he’s not the only one I’ve learned from in recent years.”

He felt the curve of a grin against his neck before she kissed it lightly. “Nysander’s prize student.” Then, her pitch even lower and her voice barely above a whisper, he heard at his ear, “And I do believe _I_ shall have the most enjoyable time teaching you… certain things.” A shudder went through him, and she chuckled in response.

“Unfortunately,” he said, regaining his breath, “it won’t be tonight, for I can’t stay. If nothing else, I need to learn how much success Magyana has had today.” _Complete,_ he hoped, though he knew it was unlikely. If more souls had been salvaged than lost, it would be a victory, but he couldn’t count even on that.

“I know,” she said, resigned but with a tinge of forlornness. “We sail at first light tomorrow, in any case. I’ve got to rise before dawn.”

They both fell silent. He sensed she was resisting the urge to say, _...but stay a little longer._ He hoped that if she gave in, he would have the strength to demur — more for her sake than for his own, or even for those of the people whose souls he might yet be able to retrieve.

At length, she eased away from him, the air cool against his back as she sat up, then stood. He turned onto his other side to watch her pull a fresh plain tunic over her small bobbing breasts, the dark nipples gone soft, and ease a clean pair of trousers up over her hips.

“Not a nightshirt?”

“I sleep fully dressed in the field,” she replied as she tied the laces. “Even after victory.” The assassination attempt was unlikely to reoccur, but he didn’t blame her. In her place he’d likely have done the same.

He rose, too, and began to draw on his own clothes. He didn’t fully realize she was watching him until her right hand shot out and squeezed his buttock. 

“Are you trying to get me to stay?” He was glad he was facing away from her, because his face felt rather hot again.

“No, just giving my hand something nice to remember for the next two weeks.” There was a distinct leer to her voice. He let himself laugh as he sat back down on the cot next to her and drew on his boots a final time.

Her voice grew soft and serious once more. “So long as the weather holds, I doubt I’ll summon you from aboard the ship.”

“Sadly, I doubt I’d have time for it anyway,” he said, one corner of his mouth quirking in regret as he stood again and buttoned his coat. “No one would look askance at me for coming to your side today, but I’ll be answering questions from the City Watch — and a great many angry nobles — for days to come. And from your brother, too.”

“Kor,” she said, and he thought he’d never before seen so sad a smile. “I’ve missed him so much. And there’ll be such a shadow over our reunion.”

He was standing in front of her again, and he lay his hand against her cheek and jaw. “Klia… I know it’s small salve for your heart right now, when the wound is so fresh. But she died as she’d always hoped she would: in battle, with her name rallying her people to victory. She’ll be laid to rest as one of Skala’s greatest warrior queens, with all Rhíminee watching. And she made a worthy successor of Elani, who’ll have you and Korathan to guide her — and Elani will rebuild the country in assured peace, rather than continue to wage a ruinous war.”

Klia inclined her head against his palm and closed her eyes tightly. A gleaming droplet pooled in the lashes of her right eye, then ran down her cheek. In a thickened voice she said, “Whoever taught you the art of comforting the bereaved — pass along my gratitude to them.”

Gently he blotted the tear with the sleeve of his coat. “I’m not sure I’ve learned it from anyone in particular. You seem to inspire me to the right words, my lady.”

With a hand on either side of her face now, he leaned forward and touched his lips to hers. There was no lust in it now, no play of tongues, but the kiss lingered. At its gentle breaking she looked up at him and whispered, “In Rhíminee, my love.”

“In Rhíminee,” he echoed. Their own reunion would be shadowed as well. But she would be there, and he there for her, and that was all that mattered. He stepped back and cast the translocation spell.

He would not seek his own bed for hours and hours, caught up as he became in salvaging the last of the souls that Magyana could not. Again and again, he saw keen blue eyes gazing out at him from the faces of near-lost children. And when he reached out for a ghostly hand, that which settled against his own would sometimes have no more than three fingers, each as strong as an eagle’s talon.


End file.
